Goals to Gold. Lee Sandford
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few footballers have this fact pressed upon them with anything like the importance it needs. At the time of writing there have been several articles in the press drawing attention to the fact that many ex-professional footballers are in severe financial difficulty, if not bankrupt. Furthermore, there are no less than 100 former footballers behind bars.
If more emphasis was put on teaching them additional skills that they could use when their football careers come to an end, or on how to invest the large sums of money they earn in their most prolific years in order to ensure a more secure financial future, it would only be a good thing. Guidance regarding alternative careers and financial planning should be as important as the careers guidance players now receive within the context of their football careers.
Back in my day, I had no idea what was the right decision for my future career and I certainly didn’t have all the facts. For instance, I automatically signed with Stoke without finding out if anyone else was interested in me. Years later, I heard that Kenny Dalglish had once tried to sign me for Liverpool but Portsmouth weren’t prepared to let me go at the time. Had I known this when my contract at PFC was finished, perhaps I would have approached him. I feel players deserve to know their career options at all times, during their time as professional footballers and after they retire.
Even personal managers and agents shouldn’t make the final decision for players. No one has a person’s best interests at heart more than they do for themselves. Whenever others enter the debate, there’s always an element of vested interest on their part. I’ve no doubt, now, that Alan Ball was thinking of how well it would reflect on him if he brought his best players up from Portsmouth.
In the end, in life, you’re always in the race alone. You have to arm yourself with all the knowledge you can get and then trust that you know best, and that includes being brutally honest with yourself and sometimes making difficult choices. To be successful in life, you need the ability to make decisions even if they are emotionally uncomfortable. You have to manage your own career, whether its football or hairdressing. Similarly, you have to manage your own investments – as I will be pointing out many times through the course of this book.
I have often questioned how well I managed my football career. (Easy to do with hindsight!) While I certainly never lacked passion for the game, I possibly lacked a certain amount of ambition.
For example, during my time at Stoke, Martin O’Neill started managing Leicester. He brought the recently relegated club back from Division One (the renamed second league) to the Premiership (the renamed top league) in 1996. When he first took over at Leicester, he was interested in signing me, but I didn’t want to leave Stoke. It could have been my chance to further my career and help put me in contention for the England squad, but I didn’t see those opportunities at the time. Although I always had my dream of being a great English football hero, of playing for my country, maybe I never saw it as anything more than a dream.
There’s a world of difference between dreams and ambition. By the very nature of the words, an ambition suggests something you believe is achievable, whereas a dream suggests something you consider out of your reach, something intangible and ephemeral. I loved Stoke, I still do. I had the best time there and it’s the first club I look out for when I check the football results, but I may have been loyal at the expense of my full potential as a professional footballer.
However, regrets are only negative if no lessons are learned. If you learn something from your decisions that gives you the ability to make better decisions in the future, then you’ve gained something positive. Instead of a regret, you can call it a learning curve. As Oscar Wilde said, experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
At Stoke under Lou Macari
My loyalty to Stoke wasn’t just wrapped up in my loyalty to Alan Ball. In the end, Alan had only lasted a couple of seasons at Stoke City, but I was there for seven years.
Midway through Stoke’s first season in the Third Division Alan got the sack and was replaced by Lou Macari, who I struggled to get along with. Lou Macari was very serious; it was all work and no play. He didn’t drink and he was a taskmaster. We may have gone back up a division under him, but we never had as much fun as we did under Alan. To be honest, Lou was more the manager I needed, but I was still young when he arrived and resisted his ideas. Many of us did. We just wanted to kick a football around but Lou had us running up hills and doing real physical training. We longed for the old “hard work buys you hard play” days under Alan Ball, but Lou wasn’t keen on too much partying going on after hours.
Of course, now I look back, I can see how well Lou treated and managed us players at the time; he was spot on. I hope I get the chance to tell him this some day. I was also probably wise not to follow my old gaffer, my football dad, to his next club... bottom-of-third-division Exeter City.
Stoke City, winners of Division 2, 1992-3
In fact, it was under Lou Macari that I experienced one of the highlights of my entire football career. It was the 1992 Autoglass Trophy (as the Football League Trophy competed for by the third and fourth division teams was then known) final. It was the first time Stoke City had played at Wembley since 1972 and it was like we’d hit the jackpot. I had watched so many FA Cup finals on TV and, like any aspiring professional footballer, it was my dream to play at Wembley.
I will never forget the first glimpse of the famous old Wembley twin towers (that have been since replaced by a huge modern arch) as we approached on the coach. We were well prepared and itching to get out and play.
My uncle had travelled to the UK undercover (as he was still apparently a wanted man) from Australia, and my 80 year-old nan was also in the crowd, along with the rest of my family. As I walked out on to the turf and saw my entire family up in the stands, I had never felt more proud. It was a very emotional moment; I can still get choked up thinking back on it now. It was a close game against Stockport County, but we won 1-0 after a brilliant goal from Mark Stein.
As I walked up with my teammates to get our trophy, I realised I was about to meet a brilliant man I had met once before. Bobby Moore was there to present the winning team with their medals. He was in the bar afterwards and my nan walked straight up to him to tell him how wonderful he was and to thank him for giving her beloved grandson a medal. The image of my nan talking to Bobby Moore seemed almost surreal. It also meant the world to me because throughout my career, the most important part of it has been sharing special moments with my friends and family. Whenever I could get someone down to the changing rooms to meet their sporting heroes, I would.
Later, when the celebrations were dying down, my brother Paul and his mate and I were walking down the side of the pitch and we saw a balloon floating around in front of one of the goals. We ran out on to the pitch and started playing with it. As Paul headed it past me into goal, recreating a Match of the Day moment, I heard one of the Wembley groundsmen shouting at us, “Oi! Get off the pitch!” We felt like we were schoolboys again!
Lou Macari did a great job at Stoke, but after another change in manager (Joe Jordan arrived when Lou went to Celtic), I began to ask myself if it might be time for me to move on too. Around this time, rumours began to surface that there was interest in me at Sheffield United, a club that had recently been relegated to the country’s second league (Division One, soon to be renamed the Championship).
After seven seasons and three managers at Stoke City, it was hard to say goodbye, but I was more than ready for a new challenge. I had a number of mates at Sheffield by then, so it felt like the right place to go.
Chapter Four: Even Further North
Signing for Sheffield United
DURING THE 1995-1996 season my great friend Adrian Heath (the ex-Everton